I still wasn't certain why I had bought my charcoal Mercedes 500E, except that after Mark died, it had seemed important to drive something new. It might have been the memories, for we had loved and fought with each other desperately in my previous car. Or perhaps it was simply that life got harder as I got older and I needed more power to get by.

I heard Lucy stir as I turned into Windsor Farms, the old Richmond neighborhood where I lived amid stately Georgian and Tudor homes not far from the banks of the James. My headlights caught tiny reflectors on ankles of an unfamiliar boy riding a bicycle just ahead, and I passed a couple I did not recognize who were holding hands and walking their dog. Gum trees had dropped another load of prickly seeds over my yard, several rolled newspapers were on the porch, and the super cans were still parked by the street. It did not require long absences for me to feel like an outsider and for my house to look like no one was home. While Lucy carried in luggage, I started the gas logs in the living room and put on a pot of Darjeeling tea. For a while I sat alone in front of the fire, listening to the sounds of my niece as she got settled, took a shower, and in general took her time. We were about to have a discussion that filled both of us with dread.

"Are you hungry?" I asked when I heard her walk in.

"No. Do you have any beer?"

I hesitated, then replied, "In the refrigerator in the bar."

I listened a little longer without turning around, because when I looked at Lucy I saw her the way I wanted her to be. Sipping tea, I mustered up the strength to face this frighteningly beautiful and brilliant woman with whom I shared snippets of genetic code. After all these years, it was time we met. She came to the fire and sat on the floor, leaning against the stone hearth as she drank Icehouse beer out of the bottle. She had helped herself to a boldly colorful warm-up suit I wore on the infrequent occasions when I played tennis these days, and her feet were bare, her wet hair combed back. I realized that if I didn't know her and she walked past, I would turn to look again, and this wasn't solely due to her fine figure and face. One sensed the facility with which Lucy spoke, walked, and in the smallest ways guided her body and her eyes. She made everything seem easy, which was partially why she did not have many friends.

"Lucy," I began, "help me understand."

"I've been fucked," she said, taking a swallow of beer.

"If that's true, then how?"

"What do you mean'if'?" She stared hard at me, her eyes filling with tears.

"How can you think for even a minute… Oh, shit. What's the point?" She looked away.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth," I said, getting up as I decided that I wasn't hungry, either. I went to the bar and poured Scotch over crushed ice.

"Let's start with the facts," I suggested as I returned to my chair.

"We know someone entered ERF at around three a.m. on this past Tuesday. We know your PIN was used and your thumb was scanned. It is further documented by the system that this person-again, who has your PIN and print-went into numerous files. The log-out time was at precisely four thirty-eight A. M. "

"I've been set up and sabotaged," Lucy said.

"Where were you while all this was going on?"

"I was asleep." She angrily gulped down the rest of her beer and got up for another one. I sipped my Scotch slowly because it was not possible to drink a Dewar's Mist fast.

"It has been alleged that there have been nights when your bed was empty," I quietly said.

"And you know what? It's nobody's business."

"Well, it is, and you know that. Were you in your bed the night of the break-in?"

"It's my business what bed I'm in, when, and where, and nobody else's," she said. We were silent as I thought of Lucy sitting on top of the picnic table in the dark, her face illuminated by the match cupped in another woman's hands. I heard her speaking to her friend and understood the emotions carrying her words, for I knew the language of intimacy well.

I knew when love was in someone's voice, and I knew when it was not.

"Exactly where were you when ERF was broken into?" I asked her again.

"Or should I ask you instead who you were with?"

"} don't ask you who you're with."

"You would if it might save me from being in a lot of trouble."

"My private life is irrelevant," she went on.

"No, I think it is rejection you fear," I said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I saw you in the picnic area the other night. You were with a friend." She looked away.

"So now you're spying on me, too." Her voice trembled.

"Well, don't waste any sermons on me, and you can forget Catholic guilt because I don't believe in Catholic guilt."

"Lucy, I'm not judging you," I said, but in a way I was.

"Help me understand."

"You imply I'm unnatural or abnormal, otherwise I would not need understanding. I would simply be accepted without a second thought. "

"Can your friend vouch for your whereabouts at three o'clock Tuesday morning?" I asked.

"No," she answered.

"I see" was all I said, and my acceptance of her position was a concession that the girl I knew was gone. I did not know this Lucy, and I wondered what I had done wrong.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked me as the evening tensely wore on.

"I've got this case in North Carolina. I have a feeling I'm going to be there a lot for a while," I said.

"What about your office here?"

"Fielding's holding down the fort. I do have court in the morning, I think. In fact, I need to call Rose to verify the time."

"What kind of case?"

"A homicide."

"I figured that much. Can I come with you?"

"If you'd like."

"Well, maybe I'll just go back to Charlottesville."

"And do what?" I asked. Lucy looked frightened.

"I don't know. I don't know how I'd get there, either."

"You're welcome to my car when I'm not using it. Or you could go to Miami until the semester's over, then back to UVA." She downed the last mouthful of beer and got up, her eyes bright with tears again.

"Go ahead and admit it. Aunt Kay. You think I did it, don't you?"

"Lucy," I said honestly, "I don't know what to think. You and the evidence are saying two different things."

"I have never doubted you." She looked at me as if I had broken her heart.

"You're welcome to stay here through Christmas," I said.

The member of the North Richmond Gang on trial the next morning wore a double-breasted navy suit and an Italian silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. His white shirt looked crisp; he was cleanly shaven and minus his earring. Trial lawyer Tod Coldwell had dressed his client well because he knew that jurors have an exceedingly difficult time resisting the notion that what you see is what you get. Of course, I believed that axiom, too, which was why I introduced into evidence as many color photographs from the victim's autopsy as possible. It was safe to say that Coldwell, who drove a red Ferrari, did not like me much.

"Isn't it true, Mrs. Scarpetta," Coldwell pontificated in court this cool autumn day, "that people under the influence of cocaine can become very violent and even demonstrate superhuman strength?"

"Certainly cocaine can cause the user to become delusional and excited," I continued directing my answers to the jury.

"Superhuman strength, as you call it, is often associated with cocaine or PCP-which is a horse tranquilizer."

"And the victim had both cocaine and benzoylecgonine in his blood," Coldwell went on as if I had just agreed with him.

"Yes, he did."

"Mrs. Scarpetta, I wonder if you would explain to the jury what that means?"